I wanted to think in a different landscape about questions that had arisen for me in my own: about the concentric circles of identity formed by memory, the body, the family; by the community, tribe or ethnic group; by locale, nationality, language and literature — and about the wild tides that have washed and wash over those neat circles, tides of invasion, colonization, emigration, exile, nomadism, and tourism. Ireland has been particularly shaped by these tides, and for me it seemed an ideal place to look at these things and their consequences.